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Until Mueller comes out and says anything that contradicts what Barr has said, its a pointless effort anyway.

Trump doesn't seem inclined to allow that.

"Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!"

What possible reason could Trump have for screaming that? What skin is it off his nose if Mueller testifies?

Naturally he'd already passed the buck last to Baghdad Bill and said it was up to him whether or not Mueller testified.

Here's the thing though: Trump and Barr should be terrified of Mueller testifying, because unlike Trump's usual crew of sycophantic slime, Mueller will answer questions with honesty, directness and forthrightness.

None of that bullshit prevaricating, splitting hairs and dancing around that Barr did, Mueller knows who he truly works for: The American people.

and today Trump has invoked executive privilege over the unredacted report.

i thought the report provided him TOTAL EXONERATION, why does he want to invoke executive privilege on that?

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

and today Trump has invoked executive privilege over the unredacted report.

i thought the report provided him TOTAL EXONERATION, why does he want to invoke executive privilege on that?

Now you get to see how a dictatorship gets started. One, you erode standard protocol. Two, you demonize the press which has some oversight on your behavior. Three, demonize anyone else who has a cross word about you. Fourth, this little incident of ignoring a subpoena for a report which has nothing to do with the daily operations of the President with his advisors. If Congress can have their Constitutional oversight neutered simply by a President ignoring any requests for information then what good is Congress. Would Trump love to eliminate Congress if given half the chance? You betcha. Would he love to be President for life as he has joked about (wink, wink) vis a vis Xi? You betcha. Then one day people will say what happened and how did that happened as seen before.

There has always been two times when a country is vulnerable. One, when it is coming apart at the seams such as during the Great Depression. We avoided that but several other countries in the world didn't. Two, when things are going so well that no one can be bothered to have their lives upended by any distraction. The I'm comfortable so why worry about that and ruin my day.

Now you get to see how a dictatorship gets started. One, you erode standard protocol. Two, you demonize the press which has some oversight on your behavior. Three, demonize anyone else who has a cross word about you. Fourth, this little incident of ignoring a subpoena for a report which has nothing to do with the daily operations of the President with his advisors. If Congress can have their Constitutional oversight neutered simply by a President ignoring any requests for information then what good is Congress. Would Trump love to eliminate Congress if given half the chance? You betcha. Would he love to be President for life as he has joked about (wink, wink) vis a vis Xi? You betcha. Then one day people will say what happened and how did that happened as seen before.

There has always been tow times when a country is vulnerable. One, when it is coming apart at the seams such as during the Great Depression. We avoided that but several other countries in the world didn't. Two, when things are going so well that no one can be bothered to have their lives upended by any distraction. The I'm comfortable so why worry about that and ruin my day.

Bravo, couldn't have said it any better.

Unfortunately Trump's kool-aid drinkers are either in full support of this or simply don't care.

It may be a victory for Trump, or push for the Democrats, but for ordinary Americans, it was depressing to hear how a political campaign welcomed and encouraged a hostile foreign power to participate in our elections.

We won't even bother to talk about the nearly-dozen cases of obstruction of justice.

Meuller was a dud today for the Dems and was revealed to be nothing more than a front for a partisan hack job. His refusal to go after Mifsud, but ruin an American 3 star... His lying to Congress about not knowing who Fusion GPS was... His rewriting of the American legal system from innocent until proven guilty to guilty until proven innocent. He did not have a good day and neither did the Dems. Even MSNBC is admitting today was a snoozer.

Meuller was a dud today for the Dems and was revealed to be nothing more than a front for a partisan hack job. His refusal to go after Mifsud, but ruin an American 3 star... His lying to Congress about not knowing who Fusion GPS was... His rewriting of the American legal system from innocent until proven guilty to guilty until proven innocent. He did not have a good day and neither did the Dems. Even MSNBC is admitting today was a snoozer.

Have you signed up the Ruskies to interfere in the 2020 elections yet?
What's the hold up?

FactChecking the Mueller Hearings

While former special counsel Robert S. Mueller reiterated in congressional testimony what he said in his voluminous report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, politicians reiterated some claims about the inquiry and its findings.

factcheck.org

Mueller testified before the House judiciary and intelligence committees on July 24. A redacted version of the special counsel’s 448-page report had been released three months earlier, on April 18. It concluded that “[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” detailing the hacking and social media operations involved, as we’ve explained before.

The report said the “investigation established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government.” It “did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.”

On the issue of potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump, the report “found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations,” but it “did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct,” Mueller wrote, because investigators refrained from making a prosecutorial judgment.

Mueller: I Did Not Clear Trump of Obstruction of Justice
Former special counsel Robert Mueller dismissed President Donald Trump's claims that his investigation had exonerated the president of obstructing his probe into Russia's efforts to help Trump win the 2016 election.

In other words (both from Associated Press, 24 July 2019 ),

Mueller: No Russia Exoneration for Trump, Despite His Claims
Robert Mueller bluntly dismissed President Donald Trump's claims of "total exoneration" in the federal probe of Russia's 2016 election interference.

It is not the job a prosecutor or any other judicial officer to exonerate anyone. Fake news.
Robert Mueller was exhibiting signs of dementia.
From his testimony he lacked knowledge of items within his report or basic information and source materials.
He showed he was not involved in interviewing those that were hired to work for him.
I wonder why there was no mention of the previous President and his inaction during the time of alleged intervention? It must be considered some sort of malfeasance?

Trump in the White House is a national security nightmare – and Mueller knows it

A word of belated advice for dejected House Democrats: believe Robert Mueller next time he tells you in advance that he would be a terrible and reluctant public witness on legal matters.

Appearing before the House judiciary committee Wednesday morning, Mueller was even more buttoned-down than his crisp white shirt. Not only did the former special counsel refuse to read aloud from his own report (“I’m happy to have you read it,” he said repeatedly), but a flustered Mueller also failed to remember which president had appointed him to his first major justice department post. (It was Ronald Reagan and not, as Mueller guessed, George HW Bush.)

The predictable and sometimes tedious judiciary committee hearing proved that Mueller lacks both the prosecutorial zeal and the performance skills to star in a remake of Watergate. Democrats may still try to make the case that Donald Trump perverted justice, but it is hard to see how Mueller helped their cause with his mantra, “I’m not going to speculate”.

By the time the hearing ended at lunchtime, it was not safe for impeachment-minded Democrats to pass too close to an open window on a high floor.

But then in a dramatic rescue mission, reminiscent of the cavalry riding over the hill in an old-time western, Adam Schiff transformed the political equation as he convened the afternoon hearing of the House intelligence committee, which he chairs.

Schiff instinctively understood that Mueller – the straight-arrow marine and former FBI director – is at his core a moralist and a patriot.

Playing to an audience of one in his compelling opening statement, Schiff said: “The story of the 2016 election is a story about disloyalty to country, about greed and about lies. Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign – including Donald Trump himself – knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy, and used it.”

After describing Trump’s panting eagerness for Russian aid as “disloyalty to country”, Schiff added a sentence that does not normally pop up in the gospel according to MSNBC: “That disloyalty may not have been criminal … but disloyalty to country violates the very oath of citizenship.”

An unfortunate legacy of Watergate is that liberals see everything through a legalistic lens. As we get caught up in the technicalities of what constitutes obstruction of justice (the key offense that brought down Richard Nixon), we tend to lose sight of the deliberate Vladimir Putin-spawned conspiracy to undermine western democracy. And we forget the degree to which Trump was – and may well still be – Moscow’s willing enabler.

At times in 2016, Trump seemed more passionate about building a Trump Tower in Moscow than he was about winning the White House

As the Republicans tried to undermine Mueller by embracing every handy conspiracy theory (somehow they missed the faking of the moon landing), the Democrats on the intelligence committee kept reminding the nation that Trump lied repeatedly about having no business interests in Russia. In fact, at times in 2016, Trump seemed more passionate about building a Trump Tower in Moscow than he was about winning the White House.

This set-up the dramatic final round of questioning as Schiff finally lured Mueller out of his heavily guarded Fortress of His Own Rectitude.

After discussing the potential for Russian blackmail, Schiff asked Mueller: “So if candidate Trump was saying ‘I have no dealings with the Russians’ but the Russians had a tape recording, they could expose that, could they not?” And rather than refusing to speculate or retreating back to the wording of his report, Mueller uttered a powerful one-word answer: “Yes.”

Emboldened Schiff went further as he said, leading the witness: “That is the stuff of counterintelligence nightmares, is it not?” Again, rather than ducking the implications of the question, Mueller replied: “Well, it has to do with counterintelligence and the need for a strong counterintelligence entity.”

Maybe this soundbite will not play powerfully on television (alas, the current standard for political relevance) since there was no yelling or pointing of fingers. But it is telling that Robert Mueller – a terse and reluctant witness who probably wouldn’t speculate about tomorrow’s weather – said, in effect, that Donald Trump in the White House represents the essence of a national security nightmare.

It is folly to immediately predict the reverberations from the most anxiously awaited congressional hearings of the Trump era. But it would be fitting if Trump – like another strutting autocrat named Napoleon – saw his imperial dreams begin to crumble at the gates of Moscow. Link
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